Bimmer Tech BMW G05 HK User manual

Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
Installation Guide
BMW G05 HK
Alpha One Amplifier
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
BMW G05 HK 1
Introduction 2
Kit Contents 3
Maximising Sound Quality 5
Disconnect the Battery Earth Lead 5
What are the RAM & Booster? 6
Accessing the RAM & Booster 7
Installing the Alpha One Amplifier 8
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
Introduction
Thank you for purchasing Bimmer Tech products! We strive to deliver the most functional, reliable and
high-quality BMW retrofit upgrades on the market. Our kits are do it yourself friendly, but if you’re not
fond of working on your car don’t worry. You can always take your kit along with these installation
instructions to one of our recommended installers or to any other professional installer in your area. If
you will be handing the installation over to a shop from outside our recommended list ideally it should
specialise in BMW vehicles.
If you will be installing the kit by yourself then it is recommended to do so in a clean, spacious, well lit
and climate controlled garage without pressing time constraints. It’s also possible to perform the
installation in a driveway or parking lot if you prepare the correct tools.
We have a dedicated amplifier installation video for the G05 X5 chassis albeit in a regular Hifi car as
opposed to a Harman Kardon equipped one. There are a couple of differences between these
installations though:
1. The power cable has to be connected to the power terminal of the battery while the ground cable
needs to be connected to a nearby ground post. Any nice and thick unpainted bolt attached to the
chassis will do.
2. Instead of connecting the PnP harness to only one module - in a HK G20 our amp needs to be
connected to two modules.
3. At this time we do not have a bolt on amp mounting solution for G05 X5’s equipped with the
Harman Kardon system. Our mounting solution for Hifi X5’s made use of an OEM bracket (which we
supplied in the amp kit) that was not present in Hifi equipped G05’s and in HK G05’s it is installed from
the factory and occupied by the second factory audio module called the Booster.
For these reasons you will need to find a suitable spot for the amplifier nearby the factory audio
modules. We specifically made the PnP harness fairly lengthy to allow placing the amplifier further
away as needed.
Here is our Hifi X5 installation video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn5sTosWXmE
The installation requires disassembly of various areas of the vehicle so it’s best to take your time, be
gentle, careful and diligent in keeping track of which screw and clip came from where in order to
reinstall the parts correctly.
In the case of any questions with regard to the installation process please contact our technical
support team in reply to the e-mail which linked these instructions or to suppor[email protected]
including the last 7 characters of your vehicle's VIN for easy order identification.
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
Kit Contents
● Alpha One Amplifier with a standard bracket
● Plug and Play Harness
● Power connector + Red Power Cable with fuse + Brown Ground cable
● Mini USB cable
● Remote in and out cables
● Adaptor cable
Example iDrive 7 Harman Kardon Alpha One Amplifier Kit Photos:
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
The Alpha One Amp, and harnesses are all that you need to install and get the kit working. We highly
recommend also connecting the mini USB cable to the amp and routing it out through the trim so that
the other end of the USB cable will be accessible in the future to allow connecting the Amp to a
Windows laptop for future tuning.
The Remote in-out cables will only be useful if you will be installing a trunk sub in the future. They can
be attached to the amp to not get lost.
The adaptor cable is included for future proofing the amp. It can also be connected to the amp to not
get lost.
Maximising Sound Quality
Before beginning the installation please go to the iDrive sound settings of your BMW and make sure
to set the bass and treble to neutral and also set all the equaliser settings right in the middle.
Disable the surround feature in iDrive - our amp is DSP tuned with time alignment to achieve a
terrific stereo soundstage in the driver's seat and the surround feature hinders the sound of our DSP.
Any kind of EQ boost leads to increased distortion coming out from the factory audio electronics
which are then fed as an input to your Alpha One Amp hence the above steps are crucial to achieving
great sound quality.
If you use streaming apps - we also highly recommend disabling any equaliser you may have set up
in there. It’s best to run as unequalized of a signal as possible to your Alpha One Amp. If you want
any changes to the DSP tuning that we provided - just let us know. All changes are best applied in
the Amps DSP and we’re not happy until you’re happy with the sound.
Speaking about streaming apps - we highly recommend using the best quality stream you can.
Whether that will be Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon with their lossless streams or even Spotify will likely
be better than a Sirius XM stream.
Finally we ship our amps turned up on the output gain so that you won’t have to and shouldn’t go
past 80% volume on the iDrive graphic volume bar. Past 80% volume on the bar even with flat EQ
excessive amounts of distortion begin creeping into the audio signal that is sent to our amps input.
If you turn it up past that - at some point clipping will become audible and one our amps input is
clipping - the sound will be obviously unpleasant.
There is nothing worse for a speaker than a distorted/clipped signal at high volume. If you’ll find
needing more volume - we can always turn up the output gain some more on our Amp to prevent you
from needing to go far up on the volume scale.
A little bit of good old fashioned common sense with the volume knob goes a long way.
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
Disconnect the Battery Earth Lead
Before beginning the installation process you must first disconnect the negative ( - ) pole of your car
battery or batteries by removing the negative battery clamps. You’ll be connecting and running power
wires to the amplifier so it is essential to do that with the batteries disconnected to prevent the
possibility of a short circuit.
Deactivate the 48V electrical system by opening
the bonnet.
The deactivation takes place automatically.
Lift up trunk floor
Remove battery ground lead from Battery ground
post
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
What are the RAM & Booster?
On BMW’s equipped with iDrive 7 and up with Harman Kardon sound systems like in your BMW there
is no longer a dedicated amplifier in the trunk that can be replaced. Instead there are two audio
modules to which our amp gets connected to via the PnP harness. Since our amp needs a lot of juice -
we also supplied you with power cables for connecting directly to the battery's positive terminal and a
ground to be connected to the nearest chassis ground.
The RAM (Receiver Audio Module) is physically bigger of the two audio modules. Depending on your
vehicle's specification it will not only supply audio signal to 7 channels worth of mids + tweeters but
also it will have one or more antenna connections. Because of this it will remain installed in your
vehicle and will be connected to our amplifier with the PnP harness.
The Booster is the smaller of the two modules. It has been tasked with powering the under seat
woofers so we’ll have to connect the plug and play harness to it too, to supply our amplifier with a low
frequency input signal.
Accessing the RAM & Booster
Please remove the following trim to access the RAM module:
Push handle 1 down and dismantle the flap 2 .
Getting the flap off to view the RAM & Booster is easy enough. If you’re handy you should be able to
plug the plug and play harness to the RAM and Booster without undoing any bracket bolts.
The RAM module is the bigger audio module facing to the inside of the rear left quarter panel.
The Booster is on the bracket closer to the inside of the trunk. It is immediately visible once the flap is
off. Make sure to plug in the PnP harness accordingly.
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
Finally connect the power cables. Run the red fused power cable directly to the positive terminal of
the battery. The ground wire can be connected to any nearby chassis ground location.
At this point you can reconnect the battery. Before you put all the trim back into place make sure to
check everything works correctly.
Once you turn the car's ignition on the Amp should start working in a matter of 5-10 seconds. If it
doesn’t turn on, check all of the connections.
If you set all the equaliser settings to neutral already - it will definitely sound amazing right out of
the gate. If you haven't yet - make sure to re-read the chapter on “Maximising Sound Quality”
Once you confirm the amp is working make sure to connect the supplied USB cable to the amp and
route it out from under the trim to a spot where it will be easily accessible and not bothering anyone.
At this point you can reassemble the trim in reverse order.
If you would like to have the sound adjusted to your liking - send us an e-mail to
suppor[email protected]
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
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Installation Instructions - BMW G05 Harman Kardon
Installing the Alpha One Amplifier
Once you have removed the flap it will be possible to install the new amp. Inserting the amp on the
brackets through the flap takes some fiddling around to get it through the opening and line it up with
the bolt holes. Our installation video covers each step of the installation process so we highly
recommend to carry out the installation after watching the video once or twice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn5sTosWXmE
If you have everything connected you can proceed to carry out a test inside the car making sure
everything works before reassembling the trim.
Your amplifier was pre-loaded with a DSP tune designed to sound best with the tone settings in iDrive
set fully flat without any EQ.
We hope you’ll enjoy the new amp.
If you have any questions please send us an e-mail to suppor[email protected]
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